TOP 10 THINGS YOU CAN DO TO ALLEVIATE THE STRESS AND FRUSTRATION OF LOSING

Losing streaks wear on mind and body. They weaken our faculties and reinforce our negativity. Id overwhelms ego. If you let yourself fall victim to the torments of feeling your heart shatter game after game, one goal loss after one goal loss, you will soon find yourself to be no more than a sputtering engine, with flat tires… made of vegetables… drooling crude oil and crude remarks… the thing on your head that used to house your brain now just a cipher without encryption, a treasure map with no X to mark the spot.

So, to help in our common goal of regaining our strength and our sanity, I offer you the top 10 things you can do to soothe your inner chaos. Be forewarned, some are dangerous and once you follow some paths, there is no road on which to return.

Without further wordy adieu:

10. Make a trade, and do it quickly and without much thought. Trade your childhood memorabilia for a pair of an old man’s socks. I also suggest trading your girlfriend for a pick or two. Just make sure whoever is making the picks has nice, long fingernails to get good and deep inside your sinus.

9. Learn to do Buddhist breathing exercises, then introduce rubber cement into the equation.

8. Practice origami on your Kings jersey.

7. Get a massage. If at the end, she asks you if you would like a happy ending, call a timeout, pull your goaltender and then decline.

6. Strip naked, step into a quiet sauna with only your ipod and headphones. Turn on a playlist that consists of only Dean Lombardi’s interviews. You will soon find your conscious floating through a sea of tranquility.

5. Do your best Matt Greene impression – no, don’t crack smarmy jokes or stare at your cohorts without rhyme or reason. Go out to your local ice rink with a friend. You will need one stick and one puck (leave the pads and helmets). Give your friend the stick and the puck at center ice, and then lie down in between the face off cirlces, facing the puck. Let your friend do the rest. You will wake up (maybe), the sunshine on your mind eternally spotless.

4. Rearrange the furniture in your room to every possible combination. Alternatively, for the next three months make it a rule that you can never be more than 6 inches from a wall when moving about your home. Remember, empathy is the first step to healing.

3. Become a Ducks fan. You will not be welcome back, but I’m sure the devil will appreciate the extra soul.

2. Alcohol. Or more specifically, MORE alcohol.

And the number one way to alleviate the frustration of the Kings’ recent struggles…

1. Watch the next telecast on tape delay. Put your TV on mute, fast-forward through the game, stopping only when you see Heidi Androl.

If none of these work for you, if you are the stubborn type, there is only one thing you can do. Go to the game tomorrow and scream and cheer your head off louder than you ever have before, because no matter how much this team tortures us, dammit, we love our Kings.

for your reading pleasure not only do we make fine hockey players and ice wine …our wine making is moving up in the world but thanks to a heavily taxed country it can be expensive and that is where California will beat us fine wine at a good price and no snow

Really, would you honestly drink anything produced within 100km of Hamilton Ontario? Doesn’t that just naturally skeeve you out?

Janice Robinson was just trying to sell books in Canada. You can have her. Hell, you can have Parker too. Give me Hugh Johnson, Andrea Immer and, most importantly, Willie Gluckstern. Gluckstern rocks. He’s a Dustin Brown hit that shatters a glass panel.

Stick to the Bloody Caesars, the Rye and Colas, and all of your excellent beers, eh. The PEI mussels should be cooked in a Loire Valley white (I like a nice chenin blanc.) That venison you have in the cottage fridge will work quite nicely with an Argentine malbec (but never let anyone convince you to try an Uruguayan Tannat by claiming it’s as good as an Argy Malbec at half the price. It ain’t. It’s all insufferable dreck.) Let’s have a nice Mosel Riesling with that fine lobster from Shediac. And let’s have beer for anything from Moncton (my least favorite town in Canada) or Hamilton (my favorite town in Canada, really.)